The present invention relates to the field of electronic devices. More particularly, the present invention relates to an electronic device and method for light control of an electronic device.
Many users of a portable electronic device may be interested in using the device in various unfavorable lighting conditions such as e.g. at night time, in rain, dust and fog; or indoors, in shady bars, smoke filled clubs, restaurants, etc. It may then be a problem to identify e.g. the keys on the keyboard of the portable electronic device, but also to identify other functionalities of an electronic device such as the mode of the electronic device.
An existing solution to that problem is to provide the portable electronic device with Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs). However, if a plurality of LEDs are arranged on top of each other in order to create illumination in a plurality of different colors, this may lead to a bulky design of the portable electronic device, but also to the use of a lot of LEDs and a complex power management situation in order to synchronize the light emitting scheme for the portable electronic device.
Further, it may also be a problem to communicate information to the user without emitting sounds, for example, in locations where such emitted sound from the portable electronic device may be disturbing for the environment, e.g. on a theatre, a concert hall, a restaurant, a meeting, or the like. There exist a plurality of information that may be displayed to the user of a portable electronic device such as an indication of the battery status, status report indicating the signal propagation conditions, the time, the date, which mode the device is currently operating, an icon indicating missed calls, incoming messages etc. For example, the receipt of an SMS may cause an icon or a user interface to appear on the display of the portable electronic device.
However, such icons, information and visual indicators typically occupy valuable display area, and may sometimes be disturbing or even exceedingly annoying to the user, even to an extent where the readability of the display is jeopardized. A cramped display may cause severe visibility problems, e.g., in case all or a plurality of the above mentioned events occur simultaneously and may cause misinterpretation or even exclude the disabled or dyslectic user from using the portable electronic device.
One possible solution may be to enlarge the display area. However, the modest physical size of contemporary portable electronic devices, which is desirable for reasons of portability, put a limit to the display size. Accordingly, it is a problem with user devices such as portable electronic devices that all notification and information is visualized only on one single display with limited size.
It is also a problem to produce an illumination scheme on a portable electronic device comprising fading in and/or fading out lights and thus create dimmer effects. Unfortunately, there exists no convenient way of achieving such illumination effects.
Further, it may be desired to be able to control the illumination of separate keys on the keyboard of a portable electronic device. According to present technology this can be achieved by adding a separate LED for each key, which needs individual control. This adds LEDs and thus also extra costs, volume, weight, and complexity to the portable electronic device. It may further be a problem with light leaking between the different keys. Existing keypads or keyboards typically employ uniform lighting or backlight for the entire keypad.